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Amazing Grace: Obama Hits a Blue Note in Charleston

By Peter Manseau

…very single syllable!” The “Amazing Grace” heard last week at the memorial service of Reverend Clementa Pinckney in Charleston was clearly part of the black church tradition. Barack Obama is no Al Green, but in the words of Questlove from the hiphop soul band The Roots, the president’s rendition included “the blackest blues note ever,” an echo of both the enduring significance of this English hymn to African American culture, and its apocryphal hi…

#WhoIsBurningBlackChurches: Is It Freedom Summer Again?

By Anthea Butler

…rs of 1995-1998, 670 churches burned, according to the Community Relations Service, and in 1996, the Church Arson Prevention Act was signed by then-President Clinton. In light of the shooting at Emanuel AME and the church burnings, the White House, FEMA and Homeland Security recently held a conference call to help clergy members protect their churches and acquaint them with various governmental resources that churches can use to be “at the ready”…

The Uncertain Post-Obergefell World of Religious Exemptions

By Sarah Posner

…caterers, florists, and hotel owners, for example, who try to deny wedding services to same-sex couples on religious grounds. “There is nothing trivial,” said Lynn, “about the insult that refusal of service represents. It is a demoralizing, offensive, and bigoted assault to human dignity.” The religious objectors are not having success in administrative proceedings and the courts. Last week, the Oregon Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Indus…

“I Was a Wild Man”: How to Decode Evangelical Testimony

By Eric C. Miller

…from a trip a few months back and discovered that my wife was having an affair. Heartbroken and devastated, I informed our church leadership and requested a sabbatical to focus exclusively on my marriage and family. As her affair continued, we separated. Sadly and embarrassingly, I subsequently sought comfort in a friend and developed an inappropriate relationship myself. Last week I was approached by our church leaders and they asked me about my…

Justice v. Revenge: The Question Beneath the Question of Prison Reform

By Xarissa Holdaway

…time or in filthy, unheated, and vermin-ridden cells. This was in the early 19th century, but the situation doesn’t sound so different from today’s correctional institutions. The number of mentally ill inmates is on the rise, as public psychiatric institutions lose funding. Buildings are overcrowded and under-maintained. Rehabilitation and substance-abuse programs are chronically underfunded. Debt imprisonment no longer exists, but the burden stil…

Strangest Hot Take of the Day: Why Evangelicals Like Trump

By Sarah Posner

…ti-immigrant diatribe, but at his weak stances on their key issues. In the service of explaining what there is of an evangelical attraction to Trump (and, as I wrote earlier this week, it is there, although by no means a majority), Brody portrays Trump as a no-holds-barred honest broker and, therefore, victim of the media. That’s why, he says, evangelicals can relate. “Donald Trump operates in a world of absolutes,” Brody writes. “A world of right…

Ben Carson’s Flat Tax Gets the Bible Wrong

By Sarah Posner

…d equally with the more affluent. Second, tithing was never actually a flat 10 percent. Contrary to Carson’s claim that the 10 percent figure applied without exception, shared equally because everyone paid the same proportion of their wealth, Jewish religious authorities created a progressive system based on a person’s wealth, said Chodorow. “At least in the Jewish tradition—and of course this is a Jewish practice that the Christians took over and…

The Martyrdom of Cecil the Lion

By Jacob J. Erickson

…lived with a companion lion. In one of my favorite Arthurian Romances, the 12th century French poet Chrétien de Troyes writes of the knight Yvain (you may know him as Gawain) traveling with a companion lion who he saved from a serpent. They have gallant adventures together. None of these stories is unambiguously ecologically good. They weren’t meant to be. Maybe these stories are nostalgic or idealistic in the care they express between humans and…

Hicksters, Stickers, and Affection: Why I Left D.C. for the Family Farm

By Timothy King

…tage or journey of self-discovery, as Thoreau had. Watching as inflation siphoned away nest eggs tucked into savings accounts in the 1970s led to a large-scale interest in investing in the tangible asset of land. The Nearings taught their acolytes how to invest in soil and get one acre to produce enough food to feed 30 families. Broad economic and social forces offer a partial explanation for why innovators and experimenters such as Thoreau, Borso…

Conservative Bishops Headed For Synod Victory?; Indonesian Sharia Official Says Gay Caning Law Meant To ‘Safeguard Human Dignity’; Slovenian Court OK’s Referendum on Marriage Equality Law; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…LGBT Advocates Strategize LGBT activists met in the Lori region on October 17 and 18 to develop a strategy for building a movement and fighting homophobia in the country. Pink Armenia reports that after social media coverage of the event, some participants have faced attacks. Hong Kong: Interview with Intersex Activist Activist Small Luk, an intersex activist from Hong Kong, describes the challenges facing her advocacy in Hong Kong and mainland C…